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Illinois State Historical Society 



JANUARY, 1908 



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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in 1854 

An Address delivered before the 
Illinois State Historical Society, at 
its 9th Annual Meeting at Spring- 
held, Illinois, Jan. 30, 1908 

By 

HORACE WHITE 



Illinois State Historical Society 

JANUARY, 1908 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in 1854 

An Address delivered before the 
Illinois State Historical Society, at 
its 9th Annual Meeting at Spring- 
field, Illinois, Jan. 30, 1908 

By 
HORACE WHITE 



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The Socle*: 
13 My '08 



Abraham Lincoln in 1 854. 



Ladies amd Gentlemen: 

When I was asked to address you on some particular event or feature of 
Mr. Lincoln's career, I chose the period of 1854, because I then first became 
acquainted with him and because he then received his first great awakening 
and showed his countrymen what manner of man he was. His debate 
with Douglas in 1858 became more celebrated because it focussed the 
attention of a greater audience and led to larger immediate results, but 
the latter was merely a continuation of the former. The subject of debate 
was the same in both years, the combatants were the same, and the audi- 
ences were in part the same. The contest of 1858 has been more talked 
about and written about than any other intellectual encounter in our 
national annals, and that is perhaps another reason why I should address 
you on the earlier one which was its real beginning. 

THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN 1854. 

The year 1854 began in a period of reaction in our politics. In 1848 
the Free Soil party had polled nearly 300,000 votes for Martin Van 
Buren for President. In 1852 its strength had dwindled to about half 
that number. Franklin Pierce was President, Jefferson Davis Secretary 
of War, and Roger B. Taney Chief Justice. Seward, Fish, Sumner, Chase, 
Fessenden, Toombs, and Douglas were the only Senators who are now 
generally remembered. Two members of the House, Breckenridge and 
Hendricks, became Vice-Presidents later; of the remaining 231 members 
only Banks, Benton, Grow, and Alexander H. Stephens can be readily 
identified by the present generation. Among the Governors of States 
were Seymour of New York, Grimes of Iowa, and Andrew Johnson of 
Tennessee. All the others have dropped below the horizon, but it is 
doubtful if any of them is more obscure now than Abraham Lincoln was 
in 1854. He had been a member of Congress for one term, but had been 
shelved. He had made a speech in the House reviewing the acts of Presi- 
dent Polk in bringing on the war with Mexico. It was a good speech. 
It contained the Lincolnian marks of logical force and felicitous choice 
of words, but it was not the best speech made on his own side of the 
House on that subject. The best speech was made by Alexander Stephens 
of Georgia. So Lincoln himself said in a letter to Herndon dated Wash- 
ington, February 2, 1848, in these words: 

"Dear William: I just take my pen to say that Mr. Stephens of 
Georgia, a little, thin, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice like 
Logan's, has just concluded the very best speech of an hour's length I 
ever heard. My old, withered, dry eyes are full of tears yet." 

Such praise from such a source prompted me to search the pages of 
the Congressional Globe and read that speech of a Southern statesman 
against a war waged in the interest of slavery. I found it replete with 



legal and constitutional lore, with moral grandeur and righteous indigna- 
tion, and tinged with such glimpses of battle and death, and needless suf- 
fering and sorrow, that I wondered not that Abraham Lincoln at the age 
of thirty-nine wept over the picture. How little did these two men then 
think that they were destined to meet in conference seventeen years later, 
charged with far greater responsibilities in a bloodier conflict. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HENRY CLAY. 

Mr. Lincoln was a follower of Henry Clay. On the i6th of July, 1852, 
he delivered in Springfield a funeral oration on the great Kentuckian in 
which, among other titles to distinction, he named him as the chief actor 
in framing and passing the Missouri Compromise act of 1820. The 
Missouri Compromise was an agreement between the North and the 
South, in Congress assembled, by which Missouri was admitted to the 
Union as a slave-holding State on condition that slavery should be for- 
ever prohibited in the territory west of Missouri and north of the line 
of 36° 30' north latitude. In his eulogy of Clay, Mr. Lincoln quoted a pas- 
sage of noble eloquence from him in 1827, in which slavery was spoken 
of as a detestable crime in its origin, and as the product of fraud and 
violence against the most unfortunate portion of the globe. Then Mr. 
Lincoln added these words : 

"Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues and his hosts were lost in 
the Red Sea for striving to retain a captive people who had already 
served them more than four hundred years. May like disasters never 
befall us!" 

What a fearful looking for, of judgment to come, was there foreshad- 
owed! 

In 1852 slavery was not the exciting subject of controversy that it be- 
came a few years later, and a Henry Clay Whig in Central Illinois was 
not likely to catch fire from the torch of Garrison in Boston, or even 
from that of Elijah Lovejoy in Alton. Nevertheless, Mr. Lincoln's mind 
was brooding over the abyss, as we discover by some loose scraps of his 
handwriting which have escaped the tooth of time, and to which I shall 
allude presently. 

REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 

On the 4th of January, 1854, Senator Douglas of Illinois reported from 
the Committee on Territories a bill to organize the Territory of Ne- 
braska, embracing all the country west of the State of Missouri and 
north of 36° 30' north latitude. It provided that said territory, or any 
portion of it, when admitted as a State or States, should be received 
into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitution might pre- 
scribe at the time of their admission. The Missouri Compromise act of 
1820 was not repealed by this provision, and it must have been plain to 
everybody that if slavery were excluded from the Territory it would not 
be there when the people should come together to form a State. 

Three days later a provision was inserted by Douglas that all questions 
pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and in the new States to be 
formed therefrom, should be left to the decision of the people residing 

4 



therein by their representatives to be chosen by them for that purpose. 
Even this did not repeal the Missouri Compromise. Although it allowed 
the people while in the Territorial condition to talk and vote on slavery 
in the abstract, it did not open the door to any slaves, nor did it fix any 
time when the talking and voting on the abstract question should be 
decisive. 

Twelve days after the Nebraska bill was first reported Senator Dixon 
of Kentucky offered an amendment to repeal the Missouri Compromise 
outright, and after some resistance Douglas accepted it, and a few days 
later he brought in a new bill dividing the Territory into two parts, Kansas 
and Nebraska. The object of this division was to give the Missourians a 
chance to make the southernmost one a slave State, if they could. The 
Missourians so understood it. In their eyes the Kansas-Nesbraska bill 
was a new Missouri Compromise founded upon the ruins of the old one. 

The bill passed both Houses of Congress and became a law May 30, 
1854. By its terms it was based upon the principle of "popular sov- 
ereignty," or "sacred right of self-government," or "right of the people 
to govern themselves." Yet it was open to more than one interpretation, 
since it did not say at what period, or in what manner, the right to admit 
or reject slavery might be exercised. Should this decision be made by 
the first one hundred, or one thousand, or ten thousand settlers in the 
Territory? Should the right to determine the question rest with the 
Territorial Legislature or with a Constitutional Convention, and in the 
latter case should the Constitution be submitted to a popular vote for 
ratification or rejection? Only one thing was altogether certain, and that 
was that the barrier which had excluded slavery from the Territory in 
question had been swept away. 

ITS EFFECT UPON LINCOLN. 

Herndon tells us that with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise his 
office discussions with Lincoln on politics became more animated, Lincoln 
insisting that the differences between freedom and slavery were becom- 
ing sharper — that the one must overcome the other, and that postponing 
the struggle would only make it the more deadly in the end. "The day 
of compromise," he said, "had passed. These two great ideas had been 
kept apart only by the most artful means. They were like two wild beasts 
in sight of each other, but held apart. Some day these deadly antagonists 
would break their bonds and then the question would be settled." 

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise opened Lincoln's eyes to the 
fact that his country could not endure permanently half slave and half 
free. His first public expression of that belief was given in Springfield 
in his speech before the Republican State Convention, June 16, 1858, but 
he gave private expression to it in 1854. Mr. Frederick Trevor Hill, in his 
book on Lincoln as a Lawyer, says : 

"Lincoln was attending court on the circuit when the news [of the pass- 
age of the Nebraska bill] reached him, and Judge Dickey, one of his 
fellow practitioners, who was sharing his room in the local tavern at 
the time, reports that Lincoln sat on the edge of his bed and discussed 
the political situation far into the night. At last Dickey fell asleep, but 
when he awoke in the morning Lincoln was sitting up in bed, deeply 



absorbed in thought. 'I tell you, Dickey,' he observed, as though continu- 
ing the argument of the previous evening, 'this nation cannot exist half 
slave and half free.' " 

Thomas Jefferson said something very like this, but in less sententious 
phrase, in 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was enacted. He then 
said: 

"A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and 
political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will 
never be obliterated, and every irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." 

Lincoln had quoted these very words from Jefferson in his eulogy on 
Clay in 1852, yet they did not cause his heart to burn within him — they 
did not come to him as a revelation — they did not set the American Union 
before him as a house divided against itself until the Missouri Com- 
promise was actually repealed. The repeal was like a blow on the head, 
which causes a man to see stars in the daytime. 

ITS EFFECT ON THE NORTHERN STATES. 

When the Nebraska bill passed there was an explosion In every North- 
ern State. The old parties were rent asunder and a new one began to 
collect around the nucleus which had supported Hale and Julian 
in 1852. These elements came together in mass conventions in 1854 in 
Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and voted to form a new party under the 
name Republican. In Illinois, however, the movement was slower. The 
elements were too discordant to crystallize readily. Rather more than one- 
half the population of the State was of Southern birth or descent. These 
people, whether classed as Whigs or Democrats, were very suspicious of 
anything which bore the taint of Abolitionism. Hence the men in the 
northern counties, of New England origin, who were eager to follow the 
example of their co-workers in the neighboring States, were obliged to 
consider the situation of their friends in the central and southern coun- 
ties, and were thus restrained from taking immediate steps to form a 
new party. 

The opponents of the Nebraska bill in Illinois were ranged in three 
camps, as Whigs, Anti-Nebraska Democrats, and Free-Soilers or Repub- 
licans. Of the first Mr. Lincoln soon became the recognized leader. The 
second was without a distinctive head, but Lyman Trumbull, by the 
promptness and energy he had shown in combating the Nebraska bill in 
the St. Clair district, seemed to be the coming man. The Free-Soilers 
were led by Owen Lovejoy and Ichabod Codding, two Congregational 
clergymen, whose lips had been touched by a live coal from off the altar 
of eternal justice. 

These men were preeminently qualified for the task of moulding the 
diverse elements of the State into an effective army. At the beginning 
Lovejoy and Codding were the only ones who were entirely foot-loose and 
had a clear view of the course before them. The others were constrained 
by the fogginess of their environment to feel their way and to move with 
caution. They were fitted for their work because they were in true 
sympathy with their following. They were successful because they were 
not precipitate. 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

Yet, highly gifted as they were, they had a hard task before them in 
attempting to unhorse Stephen A. Douglas in Illinois. With him they had 
grown into some local fame and prominence, but he had distanced them 
in the race for public preferment and had reached a position of world- 
wide celebrity, while they were still little known beyond their own baili- 
wicks. He had achieved this distinction without external aid or prestige ; 
with no powerful friends to give him a start. Nobody ever began the 
battle of life in humbler surroundings or with smaller pecuniary re- 
sources. Yet his advance was so rapid that it seemed as though he had 
only to ask anything from his fellow citizens in order to have it given 
to him more abundantly than he desired. He had filled the offices of 
State's Attorney, member of the Legislature, Register of the Land Office 
at Springfield, Secretary of State, Judge of the Supreme Court, Repre- 
sentative in Congress, Senator of the United States, and had been a for- 
midable candidate for the Presidency in the Democratic National Con- 
vention of 1852. 

In Congress, he had taken an active part in the annexation of Texas, 
in the war with Mexico, in the Oregon boundary dispute, and in the land 
grant for the Illinois Central Railway. In the Democratic party he had 
forged to the front by virtue of boldness in leadership, untiring industry, 
boundless ambition and self-confidence and horse power, engaging man- 
ners, great capacity as a party organizer, and unsurpassed powers as an 
orator and debater. He had a large head, surmounted by an abundant 
mane, which gave him the appearance of a lion prepared to roar or to 
crush his prey, and the resemblance was not seldom confirmed when he 
opened his mouth on the stump or in the Senate chamber. Although 
patriotic beyond a doubt, he was color blind to moral principles in politics 
and stone blind to the evils of slavery. In stature he was only five feet 
four inches high, but he had earned the title of the "Little Giant" before 
he entered Congress, and he kept it with the concurrence of both friends 
and enemies till the day of his death. In 1854 he filled the public eye in 
larger measure than any other American. He was the only man then 
living who could have carried through Congress a bill to repeal the Mis- 
souri Compromise. He was the only Northern man who would have had 
the audacity to propose it. Douglas and Lincoln had been rivals on many 
occasions and for many things, including the hand of Mary Todd, but 
Douglas had so completely distanced his competitor in the race for politi- 
cal honors that he hardly regarded him as a factor in the campaign of 
1854. He probably considered Lincoln out of politics, as indeed he was 
until he came back on the crest of a great moral uprising. 

LINCOLN COLLECTING HIS THOUGHTS. 

I have said that Lincoln's mind was brooding over the abyss which the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise had disclosed. Some scraps of his 
handwriting have been preserved, to which the date of July, 1854, has 
been assigned in his printed works. They are doubtless part of the con- 
tents of his hat, which Herndon tells us was the handy receptacle of the 
thoughts that he occasionally jotted down and to which he desired to 



have easy reference. Among these fugitive pieces was the following, 
dated July, 1854 : 

"The ant who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest will furiously 
defend the fruit of his labor against whatever robber assails him. So 
plain is it that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled for a 
rnaster does constantly know that he is wronged. So plain that no one, 
high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way ; for 
although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good 
thing, we never hear of a man who wishes to take the good of it by being 
a slave himself." 

Again, same date: 

"We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than 
hired laborers among us. How little they know whereof they speak ! 
There is no permanent class of hired laborers among us. Twenty-five 
years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday labors 
on his own account to-day and will hire others to labor for him to-mor- 
row." 

Again, same date: 

"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may of right enslave 
B, why may not B snatch the same argument and prove equally that he may 
enslave A ? You say A is white and B is black. It is color, then ; the 
lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule 
you are to be the slave of the first man you meet with a fairer skin than 
your own. You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are 
intellectually the superiors of the blacks and therefore have the right to 
enslave them? Take care again. By this rule you are to be the slave of 
the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own." 

It happened that the Illinois Legislature was in session when Douglas 
introduced his Nebraska bill. In a letter to Joshua F. Speed, written 
subsequently, Lincoln said that of the one hundred members of the two 
Houses seventy were Democrats and that they held a party caucus to 
consider the measure. It turned out that only three of the whole number 
favored the bill. But a day or two later orders came from Douglas 
directing that resolutions be passed approving it. There was an immediate 
"flop" on the part of these dissenting statesmen. The resolutions were 
passed by a large majority, and the party in Illinois thus became com- 
mitted to the measure — a remarkable instance of the throttling power of 
party discipline. Three Democratic Senators, however (Judd, Cook, and 
Palmer), refused to endorse the measure. Judd and Cook represented 
northern counties, where public sentiment was overwhelmingly hostile to 
the Nebraska bill. Palmer was in a more difficult position. His con- 
stituents were mainly of Southern birth or descent — he was a Kentuckian 
himself and he represented Macoupin in the Legislature. To the Repub- 
lican imagination fifty years ago Macoupin was as dark as Erebus. A 
letter from Lincoln to Palmer dated September 7, 1854, suggesting that 
since the latter had determined not to swallow the nauseous Nebraska 
pill, he should make a few public speeches stating his reasons for dissent- 
ing, is in the published correspondence of the former. 

THE DEBATES OF 1854. 

Senator Douglas made his first appearance in Illinois after the passage 
of his bill on the evening of September i, 1854, st Chicago. Here he 



attempted to defend his course in repealing the Missouri Compromise. 
He had a chilling reception, and his friends asserted that he had been 
refused a hearing and that the meeting had been broken up by an Abo- 
litionist mob. I was on the platform as a reporter, and my recollection 
of what happened is still vivid. There was nothing like violence at any 
time, but there was disorder growing out of the fact that the people had 
come prepared to dispute Douglas's sophisms and that Douglas himself 
was far from conciliatory when he found himself facing an unfriendly 
audience. The meeting was certainly a failure, and Douglas decided to 
make no more speeches in that part of the State during the campaign. 

His next appearance was in Springfield during the week of the State 
Fair, where the most notable people of the State were assembled. He 
had announced that he would speak in the large hall of the State House 
on the 3d of October. As soon as the announcement was made Mr. 
Lincoln decided to reply to him on the following day from the same 
platform. 

Douglas's justification of his Nebraska bill was that it established the 
principle of popular sovereignty in the Territories as it already existed in 
the States. Why, he asked, should not the people of the Territories have 
the right to form and regulate their own domestic institutions in their 
own way? Did they lose any of their rights or capabilities of self-govern- 
ment by migrating from their old homes to new ones? By ringing the 
changes on popular sovereignty and "sacred right of self-government," he 
was able to raise a good deal of dust and to obscure the real issue. The 
fallacy lay in the assumption that property in slaves did not differ from 
other kinds of property, and that taking negroes to the new Territories, 
and holding them there as slaves, was to be regarded in the same way 
as taking cattle, sheep, and swine. 

LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, OCTOBER 4th. 

Mr. Lincoln began his speech with an historical sketch of the events 
leading to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and then took up the 
fallacy of Douglas's "sacred right of self-government," to which he gave 
a merciless exposure, turning it over and over, inside and out, stripping 
off its mask, and presenting it in such light that nobody could fail to see 
the deception embodied in it. Such an exposition necessarily involved a 
discussion of slavery in all its aspects, and here for the first time do we 
find any broad and resounding statement of Mr. Lincoln's own attitude 
toward the institution. Here perhaps was the first distinct occasion for 
his making such a statement. He had voted in Congress some forty times 
for the Wilmot Proviso, so that his opposition to the extension of slavery 
into the Territories was not doubtful. As a stump speaker he had lan- 
guidly supported the compromise measures of 1850. But until now there 
had been no occasion which imperatively called upon him to declare his 
position on the slavery question as a national political issue. 

Such a call had now come, and he did not hesitate to tell the whole 
truth as he understood it. The telling of it makes this speech one of the 
imperishable political discourses of our history, if not of all time. It is 
superior to Webster's reply to Hayne, because its theme is loftier and its 



scope wider. The keynote of Webster's speech was "patriotism — the doc- 
trine of self-government crystallized in the Federal Union; that of Lin- 
coln's was patriotism plus humanity, the humanity of the negro whose 
place in the family of man was denied, either openly or tacitly, by the sup- 
porters of the Nebraska bill. I think also that Lincoln's speech is the 
superior of the two as an example of English style. It lacks something 
of the smooth, compulsive flow which takes the intellect captive in the 
Websterian diction, but it excels in the simplicity, directness and lucidity 
which appeal both to the intellect and to the heart. 

I heard the whole of that speech. It was a warmish day in early 
October, and Mr. Lincoln was in his shirt sleeves when he stepped on the 
platform. I observed that, although awkward, he was not in the least 
embarrassed. He began in a slow and hesitating manner, but without any 
mistakes of language, dates, or facts. It was evident that he had mastered 
his subject, that he knew what he was going to say, and that he knew 
he was right. He had a thin, high-pitched falsetto voice of much carrying 
power, that could be heard a long distance in spite of the bustle and 
tumult of a crowd. He had the accent and pronunciation peculiar to his 
native State, Kentucky. Gradually he warmed up with his subject, his 
angularity disappeared, and he passed into that attitude of unconscious 
majesty that is so conspicuous in Saint-Gaudens's statue at the entrance 
of Lincoln Park in Chicago. I have often wondered how this artist, 
who never saw the subject of his work, could have divined his presence 
and his dignity as a public speaker so perfectly. 

HIS IMPASSIONED UTTERANCES. 

Progressing with his theme, his words began to come faster and his 
face to light up with the rays of genius and his body to move in unison 
with his thoughts. His gestures were made with his body and head 
rather than with his arms. They were the natural expression of the man, 
and so perfectly adapted to what he was saying that anything different 
from it would have been quite inconceivable. Sometimes his manner was 
very impassioned, and he seemed transfigured with his subject. Perspira- 
tion would stream from his face, and each particular hair would stand 
on end. Then the inspiration that possessed him took possession of his 
hearers also. His speaking went to the heart because it came from the 
heart. I have heard celebrated orators who could start thunders of 
applause without changing any man's opinion. Mr. Lincoln's eloquence 
was of the higher type, which produced conviction in others because of 
the conviction of the speaker himself. His listeners felt that he believed 
every word he said, and that, like Martin Luther, he would go to the stake 
rather than abate one jot or tittle of it. In such transfigured moments as 
these he was the type of the ancient Hebrew prophet as I learned that 
character at Sunday-school in my childhood. 

That there were, now and then, electrical discharges of high tension in 
Lincoln's eloquence is a fact little remembered, so few persons remain 
who ever came within its range. The most remarkable outburst took place 
at the Bloomington Convention of May 29, 1856, at which the anti-Ne- 
braska forces of Illinois were first collected and welded together as one 



party. Mr. John L. Scripps, editor of the Chicago Democratic Press, who 
was present — a man of gravity little likely to be carried off his feet by 
spoken words — said : 

"Never was an audience more completely electrified by human eloquence. 
Again and again during its delivery they sprang to their feet and upon 
the benches and testified by long-continued shouts and the waving of hats 
how deeply the speaker had wrought upon their minds and hearts. It 
fused the mass of hitherto incongruous elements into perfect homogeneity; 
and from that day to the present they have worked together in har- 
monious and fraternal union." 

The speech of 1854 made so profound an impression on me that I feel 
under its spell to this day. It is known in history as Mr. Lincoln's 
Peoria speech. Although first delivered in Springfield on October 4, it 
was repeated twelve days later at Peoria. Mr. Lincoln did not use a 
scrap of paper on either occasion, but he wrote it out afterwards at the 
request of friends and published it in successive numbers of the weekly 
Sangamon Journal at Springfield. In like manner were the orations of 
Cicero preserved. In this way has been preserved for us the most 
masterly forensic utterance of the whole slavery controversy, as I think. 

THE HUMANITY OF THE NEGRO. 

Where the whole is of uniform excellence it is not easy to make extracts, 
but I shall make one or two, the first one touching the theme of the 
humanity of the negro, which the Douglas doctrine of "popular sover- 
eignty" ignored : 

■'The great majority, South as well as North (he said), have human 
sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can 
of their sensibility to physical pain. These sympathies, in the bosoms of 
the Southern people, manifest, in many ways, their sense of the wrong of 
slavery and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in the 
negro. If they deny this let me address them a few plain questions. In 
1820 you joined the North in declaring the African slave trade piracy and 
annexing to it the punishment of death. Why did you do this? If you 
did not feel that it was wrong why did you join in providing that men 
should be hung for it? The practice was no more than bringing wild 
negroes from Africa to such as would buy them. But you never thought 
of hanging men for catching and selling wild horses, wild buffaloes, or 
wild cattle. 

"Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native 
tyrants known as the slave-dealer. He watches your necessities and crawls 
up to buy your slave at a speculating price. If you cannot help it you 
will sell to him, but if you can help it you drive him from your door. You 
despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend or even as an 
honest man. Your children must not play with his ; they may rollick 
freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's children. If 
you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through with the job 
without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands 
with the men you meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the ceremony 
— instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows rich and 
retires from business you still remember him and still keep up the ban 
of non-intercourse upon him and his family. You do not so treat the 
man who deals in corn, cotton, or tobacco. 

"And yet again. There are in the United States and Territories, includ- 
ing the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks. At five hundred dollars 
per head they are worth over two hundred millions of dollars. How 
comes this vast amount of property to be running about without owners? 
We do not see free horses or free cattle running at large. How is this? 



All these free blacks are the descendants of slaves or have been slaves 
themselves ; and they would be slaves now but for something which has 
operated on their white owners inducing them at vast pecuniary sacrifice 
to liberate them. Is there any mistaking it? In all these cases it is your 
sense of justice and human sympathy continually telling you that the 
poor negro has some natural right to himself and that those who make 
mere merchandise of him deserve kicking, contempt, and death. 

"And now why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave and 
estimate him only as the equal of the hog? Why ask us to do for nothing 
what two hundred millions of dollars could not induce you to do?" 

Another striking feature of this speech was the spirit of sympathy and 
justice shown toward the Southern whites. He said: 

"They are just what we should be in their situation. If slavery did not 
now exist among them they would not introduce it. If it did now exist 
among us we should not instantly give it up. . . . When the Southern 
people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than 
we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists 
and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can 
understand and appreciate the same. I surely will not blame them for not 
doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power 
were given me I should not know what to do with the existing institution. 
My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia, 
to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me 
that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this, 
in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all 
landed there in a day they would all perish in the next ten days; and 
there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough to carry them 
there in many times ten days. . . . But all this, to my judgment, 
furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go into our own free 
territory than it would for reviving the African slave trade by law." 

Senator Douglas sat on a front bench within ten or twelve feet of 
Lincoln during the whole of the latter's speech. 

FIRST STEPS TO ORGANIZE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 

William H. Herndon was an Abolitionist like Owen Lovejoy. Lovejoy 
himself was present at this State Fair gathering, and he, too, heard the 
Lincoln-Douglas debate. As soon as Lincoln had concluded his speech 
Lovejoy or Codding moved forward from the crowd and announced that 
a meeting of the friends of freedom would be held that evening. The 
object in view was to take steps to organize the Republican party in Illi- 
nois as it had already been organized in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. 
Herndon perceived at once that the atmosphere of central Illinois was 
not yet tempered to such a movement. He knew that Lovejoy and the 
fiery souls allied with him could not be restrained, and that they intended 
to invite Lincoln personally to come to their meeting and say something 
cheering to them. He feared also that if Lincoln did not come they would 
be offended and perhaps turn against him in the coming contest for the 
Senatorship. 

So he sought Lincoln at once, and urged him to get into his buggy 
and drive to Tazewell County under pretence of having professional 
business there, and to stay away from Springfield till this crowd of 
radicals should disperse to their several homes. Lincoln did so. He kept 
out of Springfield until the radicals had finished their work. But they 
pat his name on a list of members of a Republican State Committee with- 



out consulting him, and a little later Mr. Codding sent him a notice to 
attend a meeting of this committee. Lincoln replied to Codding in a 
letter dated November 27, 1854, asking why his name had been used 
without his consent. He said he supposed that his opposition to slavery 
was as strong as that of any member of the Republican party, but that 
the extent to which he was prepared to carry that opposition practically 
was probably not satisfactory to the gentlemen composing the meeting. 
As the leading men who were seeking to organize that party were 
present on the 4th of October at the discussion between Douglas and 
himself, he wished to know whether they had misunderstood him or 
whether he had misunderstood them. What answer Codding made, if 
any, we are not informed. But we know that Lovejoy was elected a 
member of the Legislature in November and that he voted for Lincoln 
for Senator. 

LINCOLN KEEPS OUT OF IT IN 1854. 

Although Lincoln kept out of this pitfall in the manner indicated, 
Douglas met with a mishap in consequence of it. In the Ottawa joint 
debate four years later he began his attack on Lincoln with a reference 
to the meeting which Lovejoy and Codding had brought together immedi- 
ately after the Springfield debate of October, 1854. Finding Lincoln's 
name in the list of members of the Republican State Committee there 
appointed, he assumed that Lincoln had been present and had taken part 
in the proceedings. So he wrote to Charles H. Lanphier, editor of the 
Register, the Democratic organ at Springfield, asking for a copy of the 
resolution passed at the meeting. Lanphier replied by sending him two 
copies of the Register of October 16, 1854, which purported to give a brief 
report of the meeting, including a copy of the resolutions in full. But, 
for some reason, a different set of resolutions had been substituted for 
the real ones in the Register's report. The bogus resolutions demanded, 
among other things, an entire repeal of the fugitive slave law. The real 
resolutions contained no such demand. There were also other material 
differences. Lincoln came to the conclusion eventually that Lanphier 
himself had made the substitution in order to help Thomas L. Harris in 
his local Congressional campaign against Richard Yates, and that when 
Douglas, four years later, called for a copy of the resolutions, he had 
forgotten the circumstances of the change. At all events, the resolutions 
were substantially a forgery. They had been passed at some irresponsible 
gathering in Kane County and had been substituted for the real resolu- 
tions of the Springfield meeting. Douglas was not a party to the forgery, 
but, as it turned out, was the principal victim of it. 

DOUGLAS'S MISTAKE. 

At the Ottawa joint debate (1858) he read the bogus report, and pro- 
ceeded with an air of triumph to apply it as a blister upon Lincoln in the 
presence of the assembled thousands. It was easy for Lincoln to reply 
that he was not at the Codding-Lovejoy Convention at all and that he 
had no responsibility for any action taken there. He supposed that the 
resolutions read by Douglas had been actually passed at the Springfield 

13 



meeting. He did not learn the truth until some days later. At the 
Freeport joint debate, however, he came armed with the real facts, and 
Douglas was then thrown on the defensive and made a rather sorry figure. 
He succeeded, however, in clearing his own skirts of any part in the 
forgery, and he promised that on his next visit to Springfield he would 
make a more thorough investigation of the matter. Several weeks passed 
without any further reference to the bogus resolutions on either side. 
Lincoln kept his eye on Douglas's movements, however, and observed that 
the latter made a visit to Springfield early in September. As no report 
of the promised investigation had been made when they met at the Gales- 
burg joint debate (October 7), Lincoln made a scathing resume of the 
whole affair, to the serious discomfiture of his antagonist.* 

Twelve days after the Springfield debate of 1854 the two champions 
met again at Peoria. Douglas was evidently troubled by the unexpected 
vigor of his opponent, for after the Peoria debate he approached Lincoln 
and flattered him by saying that he was giving him more trouble on the 
territorial and slavery question than the whole United States Senate, and 
therefore proposed that both should abandon the field and return to their 
homes. Lincoln consented. Douglas, however, broke the agreement by 
making a speech at Princeton on the evening of the i8th of October. He 
afterwards said that he didn't want to speak at Princeton, but that Love- 
joy provoked him and forced him to do so in self-defence. Lincoln was 
not satisfied with that explanation, but he considered himself released 
from the agreement, and accordingly spoke at Urbana on the evening of 
the 24th, 

THE URBANA SPEECH. 

Henry C. Whitney heard the Urbana speech. He gives an account of 
it in his book, "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln." Whitney was a resi- 
dent of Urbana. He says that he called at the old Pennsylvania House 
on the east side of the public square on the evening of the 24th, and that 

* The genuine and the bogus resolutions are subjoined: 

GENUINE RESOLUTIONS. 

Resolved, That as freedom is national and slavery sectional and local, the absence 
of all law on the subject of slavery presumes the existence of a state of freedom 
alone, while slavery exists only by virtue of positive law. 

That slavery can exist in a Territory only by usurpation and in violation of law, 
and we believe that Congress has the right and should prohibit its extension into 
such territory, so long as it remains under the guardianship of the general govern- 
ment. 

BOGUS RESOLUTION. 

Resolved, That the times imperatively demand the reorganization of parties, and 
repudiating all previous party attachments, names and predilections, we unite our- 
selves together in defence of the liberty and Constitution of the country, and will 
hereafter cooperate as the Republican party pledged to the accomplishment of the 
following purposes: To bring the administration of the government back to the 
control of first principles; to restore Nebraska and Kansas to the position of free 
Territories; that as the Constitution of the United States vests in the States and 
not in Congress the power to legislate for the extradition of fugitives from labor, 
to repeal and entirely abrogate the fugitive slave law; to restrict slavery to those 
States in which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into 
the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude slavery from 
all the Territories over which the government has exclusive jurisdiction; and to 
resist the acquirement of any more Territories, unless the practice of slavery therein 
forever shall have been prohibited. 

14 



he there found Mr. Lincoln and David Davis in a plainly furnished bed- 
room with a comfortable wood fire. It was his first meeting with either 
of them. He was received cordially by both. Lincoln was in his story- 
telling humor, and after some time spent in that way they went over to 
the court house opposite, where eleven tallow candles, burning on the 
lower sashes of the windows, gave a sign of something unusual going on 
in the town. The house was full of people, and Lincoln then and there 
made his third speech on the mighty issue of slavery. Whitney was 
impressed, as I had been twenty days earlier, that he had been listening 
to "a mental and moral giant." The three men went back to the hotel 
together, and Lincoln resumed his story-telling at the point where he 
had left off, "as if the making of such a speech as this was his pastime." 
Although speechmaking had now come to an end, the campaign con- 
tinued. Lincoln and his friend, Stephen T. Logan, were nominated for 
members ©f the lower house of the Legislature from Sangamon County. 
Lincoln had protested against the use of his name, but had finally yielded 
to the importunities of his friends, who urged that the party ought to 
bring forward its very strongest men. That this was a sound view was 
shown by what followed. Lincoln and Logan were elected by about 600 
majority. Then Lincoln resigned his seat in order to improve his chances 
in the coming Senatorial contest, looking at the large majority cast at 
the regular election for the Whig candidates, he did not doubt that at the 
special election a Whig would be chosen. But the very opposite thing 
happened. The day for voting turned out to be cold and rainy. The 
Democrats pretended to take no interest in the special election, but secretly 
contrived to bring out their full strength, and thus elected their candidate 
by eighty-two votes. This made a difference of two in the Legislature, 
where there were no votes to spare. 

STRUGGLE FOR THE SENATORSHIP IN 1854-5. 

Notwithstanding this mishap, Lincoln made an active canvass for the 
Senatorship. The term of James Shields was expiring, and Douglas was 
moving heaven and earth to secure his reelection. Shields had supported 
the Nebraska bill in a lukewarm way as a Democratic party measure, but 
he professed to take no special interest in it. He was an Irish soldier of 
fortune, and a very winning one personally. He was twice elected Senator 
of the United States after he lost his seat from Illinois — once from Min- 
nesota and again from Missouri. It seemed as though he only needed to 
show himself in any State where a Senatorial vacancy existed in order to 
be promptly chosen to fill it. 

As soon as the Legislative returns were in Lincoln made an estimate 
of the chances. He concluded that there was an anti-Nebraska majority of 
one in the State Senate and of thirteen in the House. He wrote letters to 
the members whom he personally knew, soliciting their votes, and he 
sought to reach others by the influence of friends, especially Elihu B. 
Washburne and Joseph Gillespie. Ideal justice certainly demanded that 
he be elected if the anti-Nebraska forces had a majority. Such a ma- 
jority existed, but it was heterogeneous. All the varieties and discord- 
ances of opinion that existed in the State cropped up in the Legislature, 

15 



including some whose existence had not been suspected. Some men who 
had been elected on the anti-Nebraska ticket actually voted for Shields on 
grounds of personal friendship. Even that was not the strangest or the 
most baffling element in the mixture, for Lincoln discovered ten days 
before the voting began that Joel A. Matteson, Governor of the State, 
had an ambition to fill Shields's place in the Senate and that he had been 
able to recruit a small third party composed of members from the vicinity 
of the Illinois and Michigan canal who were devoted to his personal 
interests. Any such votes, if obtained, would be detached from Lincoln, 
and their movement would be made comparatively easy by the fact that 
Matteson had never committed himself either for or against the Nebraska 
bill. So his supporters could say or pretend that Matteson was as much 
opposed to it as Lincoln himself. The supporters of Shields, if they 
should find it impossible to reelect him, would naturally turn to Matteson. 
Although Lincoln and his friends had ample warning of this Matteson 
diversion, they were utterly unable to head it oflF. 

A HETEROGENEOUS LEGISLATURE. 

The Legislature consisted of one hundred members — twenty-five Sen- 
ators and seventy-five Representatives. Thirteen of the Senators had been 
elected in 1852 for a four years' term and were now holding over. Among 
these were John M. Palmer of Carlinville, N. B. Judd of Chicago, and 
Burton C. Cook of Ottawa, all of whom had been elected as Democrats, 
but had refused to follow Douglas in support of the Nebraska bill. These 
three men, with two Representatives from Madison County, named Baker 
and Allen, voted for Lyman Trumbull on every ballot. Trumbull had 
just been elected a member of Congress in the St. Clair district on the 
anti-Nebraska ticket. The first mention of his name in Lincoln's printed 
correspondence is found in a letter to Joseph Gillespie dated December i, 
1854, in which he (Lincoln) asks the question "whether Trumbull intends 
to make a push." Then he adds : "We have the Legislature clearly 
enough on joint ballot, but the Senate is very close, and Cullom told me 
to-day that the Nebraska men will stave off the election if they can. 
Even if we get into joint vote we shall have difficulty to unite our forces." 

The State Senate consisted of nine Whigs, thirteen regular Democrats, 
and the three anti-Nebraska Democrats above named. One of the holding- 
over Senators (Uri Osgood) represented a district which had given an 
anti-Nebraska majority in this election. One of the Whig members (J. L. 
D. Morrison) of the St. Clair-Monroe district was elected on the same 
ticket with Trumbull, but he was a man of Southern leanings, and his 
vote on the Senatorial question was considered doubtful. 

The Whig Senators, in order to conciliate the anti-Nebraska Democrats, 
voted to give the entire patronage of the Senate to them, including good 
slices to Osgood and Morrison. In this way they secured an agreement 
to go into joint convention, but they got no other quid pro quo; for in 
the Senatorial election both Osgood and Morrison voted for Shields. In 
the House there were forty-six anti-Nebraska men of all descriptions and 
twenty-eight Democrats. One member, Randolph Heath of the Lawrence- 
Crawford district, did not vote in the election for Senator at any time. 

16 



In the chaotic condition of parties it was not to be expected that all 
the opponents of Douglas would coalesce at once. The chief obstacle to 
such union was the dividing line between Whigs and Democrats. The 
Whig party was expecting to reap large gains from the split in the Demo- 
cratic party on the Nebraska question. This was a vain hope, because the 
Whigs were split also, but while it existed it fanned the flame of old 
enmities. Moreover, the anti-Nebraska Democrats in the campaign had 
claimed that they were the true Democracy and that they were purifying 
the party in order to preserve it intact and give it new strength and vital- 
ity. They could not instantly abandon that claim by voting for a Whig 
for the highest office to be filled. 

TRUMBULL ELECTED SENATOR. 

The two houses met in the Hall of Representatives on February 8, 
l8S5, to choose a Senator. Every inch of space on the floor and lobby 
was occupied by members and their political friends, and the gallery was 
adorned by well-dressed women, including Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Matte- 
son, the Governor's wife, and her fair daughters. The Senatorial election 
had been the topic of chief concern throughout the State for many months 
and now the interest was centred in a single room not more than one hun- 
dred feet square. The excitement was all-pervading, for everybody knew 
that the event was fraught with consequences of great pith and moment, 
far transcending the fate of any individual. 

Mr. Lincoln had been designated as the choice of a caucus of forty-five 
members, including all the Whigs except Morrison and most of the Free- 
Soilers. 

When the joint convention had been called to order General James 
Shields was nominated by Senator Benjamin Graham, Abraham Lincoln 
by Representative Stephen T. Logan, and Lyman Trumbull by Senator 
John M. Palmer. The first vote resulted as follows: 

Necessary to a choice, 50. 

Lincoln 45 

Shields 41 

Trumbull 5 

Scattering 8 

Total 99 

Several members of the House, who had been elected as anti-Nebraska 
Democrats, voted for Lincoln and a few for Shields. The vote for Trum- 
bull consisted of Senators Palmer, Judd, and Cook, and Representatives 
Baker and Allen. 

On the second vote Lincoln had 43 and Trumbull 6, and there were no 
other changes. A third roll-call resulted like the second. Thereupon 
Judge Logan moved an adjournment, but this was voted down by 42 to 56. 
On the fourth call Lincoln's vote fell to 38 and Trumbull's rose to 11. 
On the sixth, Lincoln lost two more and Trumbull dropped to eight. 

It now became apparent from the commotion on the Democratic side of 

17 



the chamber that the Matteson flank-movement was in progress, for the 
seventh ballot resulted as follows : 

Necessary to a choice, 50. 

Matteson 44 

Lincoln 38 

Trumbull 9 

Scattering 7 

Total 98 

On the eighth call Matteson gained two votes, Lincoln fell to 27, and 
Trumbull received 18. On the ninth and tenth Matteson had 47, Lincoln 
dropped to 15, and Trumbull rose to 35. 

The excitement now became intense, for it was believed that the next 
vote>would be decisive. Matteson wanted only three of a majority, and 
the only way to prevent his election was to turn Lincoln's fifteen to Trum- 
bull, or Trumbull's thirty-five to Lincoln. Obviously the former propo- 
sition was the only safe one, for none of Lincoln's men would go to Matte- 
son in any kind of shuffle, whereas three of Trumbull's Democratic friends 
might easily be lost if an attempt were made to transfer them to the 
leader of the Whigs. Lincoln was quick to see the impending danger and 
to apply the remedy. He was the only one who could apply it, since 
the fifteen supporters who still clung to him would never have left him 
except at his own request. He now besought his friends to vote for 
Trumbull. Some natural tears were shed by Judge Logan when he yielded 
to the appeals of his dear friend and former partner. Logan said that 
the demands of principle were superior to those of personal attachment, 
and he transferred his vote to Trumbull. All of the remaining fourteen 
followed his example, and there was a gain of one vote that had been 
previously cast for Archibald Williams. So the tenth and final roll-call 
gave Trumbull 51 votes and Matteson 47. One member (Waters) still 
voted for Williams and one (Heath) did not vote at all. Thus the one 
hundred members of the joint convention were accounted for, and Trum- 
bull became Senator by a majority of one. 

This result astounded the Democrats. They were more disappointed by 
it than they would have been by the election of Lincoln. They regarded 
Trumbull as an arch traitor. That he and his fellow traitors, Palmer, 
Judd, and Cook, should have carried off the great prize was an unexpected 
and most bitter pill, but they did not know how bitter it was until Trum- 
bull took his seat in the Senate and opened fire on the Nebraska iniquity. 

LINCOLN SATISFIED WITH THE RESULT. 

Lincoln took his defeat in good part. Later in the evening there was a 
reception given at the house of Mr. Ninian Edwards, whose wife was a 
sister of Mrs. Lincoln, and who had been much interested in Lincoln's 
success. He was greatly surprised to hear, just before the guests began 
to arrive, that Trumbull had been elected. He and his family were easily 
reconciled to the result, however, since Mrs. Trumbull had been from her 

18 



girlhood, as Miss Julia Jayne, a favorite in Springfield society. When she 
and Judge Trumbull arrived they were naturally the centre of attraction. 
Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln came in a little later. The hostess and her husband 
greeted them most cordially, saying that they had wished for his success, 
and that while he must be disappointed yet he should bear in mind that 
his principles had won. Mr. Lincoln smiled, moved toward the newly 
elected Senator, and saying, "Not too disappointed to congratulate my 
friend Trumbull," shook him warmly by the hand. Mr. Lincoln's own 
testimony as to the facts and his own feelings regarding them are set 
forth at length, and quite minutely, in a letter to Elihu B. Washburne, 
dated February 9, 1855, the next day after the election. He says in con- 
clusion : "I regret my defeat moderately, but am not nervous about it. I 
could have headed off every combination and been elected had it not been 
for Matteson's double game — and his defeat now gives me more pleasure 
than my own gives me pain. On the whole it is perhaps as well for our 
general cause that Trumbull is elected." 

And so it seems to me now. Lincoln's defeat was my first great dis- 
appointment in politics, and I was slow in forgiving Judd, Palmer, and 
Cook for their share in bringing it about. But before the campaign of 
1858 came on I was able to see that they had acted wisely and well. They 
had not only satisfied their own constituents, and led many of them into 
the new Republican organization, but they had given a powerful reinforce- 
ment to the party of freedom in the nation at large, in the person of 
Lyman Trumbull, whose high abilities and noble career in the Senate paved 
the way for thousands of recruits from the ranks of the Democratic party. 

PERSONAL ASSOCIATION WITH LINCOLN. 

As I have already remarked, my personal acquaintance with Lincoln 
began in 1854. I had just passed my twentieth birthday. I was intro- 
duced to him shortly before he rose to make the speech which has been 
here feebly described. I had studied his countenance a few moments be- 
forehand, when his features were in repose. It was a marked face, but so 
overspread with sadness that I thought that Shakespeare's melancholy 
Jacques had been translated from the forest of Arden to the capital of 
Illinois. Yet when I was presented to him and we began a few words of 
conversation this expression of sorrow dropped from him instantly. His 
face lighted up with a winning smile, and where I had a moment before 
seen only leaden sorrow I now beheld keen intelligence, genuine kindness 
of heart, and the promise of true friendship. 

After this introduction it was my fortune during the next four years 
to meet him several times each year, as his profession brought him fre- 
quently to Chicago, where I was employed in journalism. I became Sec- 
retary of the Republican State Committee and was thus thrown into 
closer intercourse with him, and thus I learned that he was an exceedingly 
shrewd politician. N. B. Judd, Dr. C. H. Ray, and Ebenezer Peck were 
the leading party managers, but Lincoln was a frequent visitor at the cam- 
paign headquarters, and on important occasions he was specially sent for. 
The committee paid the utmost deference to his opinions. In fact, he 
was nearer to the people than they were. Travelling the circuit he was 

19 



constantly brought in contact with the most capable and discerning men 
in the rural community. He had a more accurate knowledge of public 
opinion in central Illinois than any other man who visited the committee 
rooms, and he knew better than anybody else what kind of arguments 
would be influential with the voters and what kind of men could best 
present them. 

I learned also by this association that he was extremely eager for 
political preferment. This seemed to me then, as it does now, perfectly 
proper. Nor did I ever hear any criticism visited upon him on account 
of his personal ambition. On the contrary, his merits placed him so far 
in advance that nothing was deemed too good for him. Nobody was 
jealous of him. Everybody in the party desired for him all the preferment 
that he could possibly desire for himself. In the great campaign of 1858 I 
travelled with him almost constantly for four months, the particulars of 
which journeying I have related in the second edition of Herndon's "Life 
of Lincoln." After his election as President I was sent by my employers 
to Washington City as correspondent of the Chicago Press and Tribune, 
and thus I had occasional meetings with him until very near the day of 
his death. In short, I was privileged to be within the range of his per- 
sonal influence during the last eleven years of his life, when he was making 
history and when history was making him. 

LINCOLN AS A HUMORIST AND A MORALIST. 

Mr. Lincoln was a many-sided man and one who presented striking 
contrasts. He was the most humorous being I ever met, and also one 
of the most serious. His humor was of the impromptu and contagious 
kind that takes possession of all parts of the person as well as all the 
parts of speech. As a master of drollery, he surpassed all of his con- 
temporaries in Illinois, and yet his solemnity as a public speaker and a 
political and moral instructor was like that of an Old Testament prophet. 
He was the only public speaker I have ever known thus doubly gifted, 
whose powers of mirth did not submerge or even impair his powers of 
gravity. "He combined within himself," says Mr. Henry C. Whitney, 
"the strangely diverse roles of head of the State in the agony of civil war, 
and also that of the court jester; and was supremely eminent in both char- 
acters." This sounds like a paradox, but it is quite true. The Lincoln 
who fought Douglas on the stump in 1854 and 1858 took all of his jocose 
as well as his serious traits to Washington in 1861. 

How are we to account for these wonderful turns "from grave to gay, 
from lively to severe"? Well, he was not the only person thus doubly 
endowed. The same genius that gave us Macbeth, and Lear, and Hamlet, 
gave us Falstaflf, and Touchstone, and Dogberry. Shakespeare was the 
superior of Sophocles in tragedy and of Plautus in comedy. Lincoln did 
not have the gift of poetry, but within the range of prose his power of 
expression was akin to that of Shakespeare. I chanced to open the other 
day his Cooper Institute speech. This is one of the few printed speeches 
that I did not hear him deliver in person. As I read the concluding 
pages of that speech the conflict of opinion that preceded the conflict of 
arms then sweeping upon the country like an approaching solar eclipse, 

20 



seemed prefigured like a chapter of the Book of Fate. Here again he 
was the Old Testament prophet, before whom Horace Greeley bowed his 
head, saying that he had never listened to a greater speech, although he 
had heard several of Webster's best. 

AS AN ANTI-SLAVERY ORATOR. 

The subject of human slavery, which formed the principal theme of Mr. 
Lincoln's speech, has touched many lips with eloquence and lighted many 
hearts with fire. I listened to most of the great anti-slavery orators of 
the last half century, including Wendell Phillips, Owen Lovejoy, and 
Henry Ward Beecher, but I must say that Abraham Lincoln, who was 
not classed as an anti-slavery orator, or even an anti-slavery man, before 
he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, made a stronger anti-slavery 
impression upon me than any of them. 

The reason why he was not reckoned by the anti-slavery men as one 
of themselves was that he made the preservation of the Union, not the 
destruction of slavery, his chief concern. But he held then, as he did 
later, that the Union must be preserved consistently with the Constitution 
and with the rule of the majority. Preserving it by infringing these was, 
in his view, an agreement to destroy it. 

Mr. Lincoln quickly gained the confidence of strangers, and, if they were 
much with him, their affection as well. I found myself strongly drawn 
to him from the first, and this feeling remains to me now as a priceless 
possession. James Russell Lowell said that he counted it a great gain to 
have lived at the same time with Abraham Lincoln. How much greater 
the gain to have felt the subtle influence of his presence. This personal 
quality, whose influence I saw growing and widening among the people 
of Illinois from day to day, eventually penetrated to all the Northern 
States, and after his death to all the Southern States. It was this magical 
personality that commanded all loyal hearts. It was this leadership that 
upheld confidence in the dark hours of the war and sent back to the 
White House the sublime refrain : 

"We are coming. Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more." 

Could any other man then living have grappled the affections and con- 
fidence of the plain people and held them steadfast and unwavering as 
did this homely giant of the prairies? He was himself one of the plain 
people. What was in his mind and heart was in theirs. He spoke 
straight into their bosoms. He translated the weightiest political and 
social problems this country has ever dealt with into language that all 
could understand. Nobody was so humble, nobody so high, that he could 
not draw new lessons and fresh inspiration from Abraham Lincoln dur- 
ing that great crisis. 

Looking back upon the whole anti-slavery conflict, is it not a cause for 
wonder that the man who finally led the nation through the Red Sea and 
gave his own Hfe at the very entrance of the promised land, was born 
in a slave State, of the most humble parents, in crushing poverty, and 
in the depths of ignorance, and had reached the age of fifty before he 
was much known outside of his own State? Was there ever such un- 

21 



promising material from which to fashion the destroyer of American 
slavery ? 

LINCOLN'S GROWING FAME. 

Abraham Lincoln has been in his grave more than forty-two years. 
When he was stricken down by an assassin's hand it was said by many 
of his contemporaries, and perhaps believed by most of them, that he had 
passed away at the culminating point of his fame. 

The world's history contains nothing more dramatic than the scene in 
Ford's Theatre. The civil war, the emancipation of a race, the salvation 
of our beloved Union, combined to throw the strongest light upon "the 
deep damnation of his taking off." In spite of these blazing accessories, 
we should have expected, before the end of forty-two years, that a con- 
siderable amount of dust would have settled upon his tomb. This is a 
busy world. Each generation has its own problems to grapple with, its 
own joys and sorrows, its own cares and griefs, to absorb its thoughts 
and compel its tears. Time moves on, and while the history of the past 
increases in volume, each particular thing in it dwindles in size, and so 
also do most men. But some men bulk larger as the years recede. 

The most striking fact of our time, of a psychological kind, is the 
growth of Lincoln's fame since the earth closed over his remains. The 
word Lincolniana has been added to our dictionary. This means that a 
kind of literature under that name, extensive enough to be separately 
classified, catalogued, advertised, marketed, and collected into distinct 
libraries, has grown up. There is a Lincolnian cult among us as well as a 
Shakesperean cult, and it is gaining votaries from year to year. The 
first list of Lincoln literature was published by William V. Spencer, in 
Boston, in 1865. It included 231 titles of books and pamphlets published 
after Lincoln's death, all of which were in the compiler's possession. This 
was followed in 1866 by John Russell Bartlett's "Literature of the Rebel- 
lion," including in a separate list 300 titles of Eulogies, Sermons, Ora- 
tions, and Poems, all published after Lincoln's death. In 1870 Andrew 
Boyd, a directory publisher of Albany, N. Y., published his "Memorial 
Lincoln Bibliography," an octavo volume of 175 pages, in which he gave 
the title and description of the books, pamphlets, and relics then in his 
own collection. The introduction to this bibliography was written by 
Charles Henry Hart, still living at Philadelphia. This collection was sold 
to Major William H. Lambert of Philadelphia, whose collection of Lin- 
colniana is now one of the most important in the country, and especially 
in autograph letters. Major Lambert was a soldier in the civil war and 
is the author of a most interesting address on the life and character of 
Lincoln, delivered before his fellow soldiers of the G. A. R. His collec- 
tion embraces about 1,200 bound volumes, including separately bound 
pamphlets, about 100 autograph letters and documents of Lincoln, fifty 
broadsides, and many miscellaneous pieces. 

LINCOLNIAN LITERATURE. 

A Lincoln bibliography was compiled by Mr. Daniel Fish of Minne- 
apolis and published in the year 1900. It was revised, enlarged, and repub- 
lished in 1906, containing 1,080 separate titles. It does not include peri- 

22 



odical literature, or political writings of the period in which Lincoln 
lived unless they owe their origin to him as an individual. Judge Fish 
has in his own collection of Lincolniana 295 bound volumes, 559 pamphlets, 
and 100 portraits. 

Mr. Judd Stewart of Plainfield, N. J., has a very notable collection of 
Lincolniana, embracing 380 bound volumes, about 1,200 bound pamphlets, 
several unpublished letters, between 700 and 800 engravings, lithographs 
and paintings, and many songs and pieces of sheet music. All of these 
items have been passed upon by Judge Fish as purely Lincolniana. Mr. 
Stewart has more than 100 titles which are not included in Fish's biblio- 
graphy. 

A very remarkable collection is that of John E. Burton of Milwaukee, 
Wis., consisting of 2,360 bound volumes and pamphlets, the collection of 
which, Mr. Burton says, "has been the restful and happy labor of twenty- 
eight years." Among other things he has the original proclamation of 
emancipation signed by Lincoln and Seward and attested by John G. 
Nicolay and John Hay. 

Mr. Charles W. McLellan of Champlain, N. Y., has 1,921 bound volumes, 
1,348 pamphlets, eight manuscripts, 138 autographs of Lincoln, 1,100 
engravings, and 579 songs and miscellaneous pieces, in all more than 
5,000 items. 

Mr. D. H. Newhall of 59 Maiden Lane, New York, has a list of 487 
collectors of Lincolniana, for the most part unknown to each other, who 
are now living; that is, persons who have such collections and who are 
constantly adding to them. I have corresponded with some of them. Mr. 
E. M. Bowman of Alton, III, has 247 titles of bound and unbound books 
and pamphlets; Mr. John S. Little of Rushville, 111., has 257, and so on. 

The existence of a demand for Lincolniana creates a supply. There 
are dealers in it, some of whom buy and sell that literature exclusively, 
while others make it a large part of their trade. In the former class is 
Mr. D. H. Newhall, already mentioned. In the latter is Mr. A. S. Clark, 
of Peekskill, N. Y. I have a recent catalogue issued by the latter con- 
taining 496 titles, with the price of each annexed. Mr. Newhall informs 
me that he has 2,874 titles in his card list of books and pamphlets, i. e., 
that he knows of the existence of that number, not counting periodical 
literature or broadsides. His list is still incomplete, and he believes that 
it will reach 3,000 when finished. Mr. D. S. Passavant of Zelienople, near 
Pittsburgh, Pa., deals in Lincolniana in foreign languages. Lives of 
Lincoln have been published in the French, German, Dutch, Swedish, 
Italian, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Welsh, and Ha- 
waiian tongues. There is a dealer in Lincolnian relics at No. 46 West 
Twenty-eighth Street, New York City. Mr. Oldroyd's great collection 
of such relics, now placed in the house where Lincoln died in Washington 
City, is too well known to need special description. 

Equally significant is the daily citation of Lincoln's name and authority 
by public writers and speakers and in conversation between individuals, 
as an authority in politics and in the conduct of life. Everybody seems to 
think that a quotation from him is a knock-down argument. His sayings 
are common property. They are quoted as freely by Democrats as by 
Republicans. All help themselves from that storehouse, as they make 

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quotations from Shakespeare, or Burns, or Longfellow. He is more 
quoted to-day than he was in his lifetime, and more than any other 
American ever was. 

CONCLUSION. 

So we see that Mr. Lincoln's death did not take place at the culmination 
of his fame, but that it has been rising and widening ever since and shows 
no signs of abatement. Of no other American of our times can this be 
said. Can it be said of any other man of the same period in any part of 
the world? I cannot find in any country a special department of literature 
collecting around the name of any statesman of the nineteenth century 
like that which celebrates the name of our martyr President. This mass 
of literature is produced and collected and cherished because the hearts 
of men and women go out to Lincoln. It is not mere admiration for his 
mental and moral qualities, but a silent response to the magnetic influence 
of his humanity, his unselfish and world-embracing charity. And thus 
though dead he yet speaketh to men, women, and children who never 
saw him, and so, I think, he will continue to speak to generations yet 
unborn, world without end. Amen. 



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